Thinking More Deeply About a Hand

When I started playing the clarinet in fifth grade, I learned to play a scale.  As I played in elementary school, then Jr. high, high school, college and finally in an army band, I learned more about music, and about scales, every step of the way.

In music there isn't just a scale.  There are major and minor scales.  Minor scales come in melodic minor and harmonic minor.  There are pentatonic (5 note) scales which are used a lot in Asian music. There are modal scales.  I just took a look on Google and there are a bunch of scales that I've never heard of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musical_scales_and_modes

Playing a poker hand is like that.  When you're a beginner, you probably bet if you think you have the best hand--but to be a good player, you have to know if you're getting the correct pot odds to play. Later you learn that there are express and implied odds.  Just as when a musician is playing scales, there is always more for a poker player to learn.

One of the most important poker sayings is, "It depends."  There often is more than one way to profitably play (or maybe not play) a hand and it depends on a lot of factors.  For example, how many players are in the hand and what the stack sizes are (how many chips each player has)?

Lately I've been watching videos of  World Poker Tour Player of the Year Johnathan Little's weekly podcast and it's been a revelation.  He talks his way through a hand that he played and says what he was thinking while he was playing.  As they say in the commercials, "But wait!  There's more!"

Once Little has analyzed the way the hand was played, he starts asking "What if?  What if I had bet a little more (or less) in that spot--what might have happened? Was that a reasonable spot to bluff?  On what level was my opponent thinking? Would he have folded if I went all in?  Would he have been suspicious if I made a small bet?

I started digging into those videos at about the same time that I was reevaluating my bet sizing.  I realized that my bet sizes were too consistent. Always doing things the same way has it's place in poker.  If I bet half the size of the pot whether I have a good hand or not, it makes me harder to read.

While what I was doing wasn't bad, there are times when it's better to do something else.  In particular, I noticed that some players will put a lot of chips in the pot if they can do it a little at a time.

Here is an example:

I have a pair of kings, a very strong hand that will win the pot much of the time.

Villian and I each have stack sizes of 1,000.

If I bet 250, a player might fold because he doesn't want to risk a fourth of half his stack.  However, if I make small bets on every street, I might get him to put in 200 chips by the end of the hand.  In this situation some weak players will think sometime like, "It's just a few more chips and I don't want to give up yet."

Combining what I figured out on my own with what I've learned from watching Little's videos. I now look at hands very differently.  I don't think about whether an action is a good play, I think about whether it's the best play.